A communication system is formed, at a minimum, by a transmitter and a receiver interconnected by a communication channel. Communication signals generated by the transmitter are transmitted upon the communication channel to be received by the receiver.
A radio communication system is a communication system in which the communication channel is formed of a portion of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum. A fixed or hard-wired connection is not required between the transmitter and the receiver to provide a communication path for the communication channel. A radio communication system is therefore advantageously utilized when the use of such fixed or hard-wired connections would be inconvenient or impractical.
A cellular communication system is exemplary of a radio communication system. A cellular communication system is a multi-user communication system. Users communicate by way of mobile terminals with selected fixed-site transceivers forming portions of the network infrastructure of the communication system.
The fixed-site transceivers of the network infrastructure are positioned at spaced-apart locations throughout a geographical area to be encompassed by the cellular communication system. Each of the fixed-site transceivers defines a cell and channels are allocated to each of the cells for communications between mobile terminals and the base stations therein. A cellular communication system makes relatively efficient use of the portion of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum allocated thereto as the channels assigned to the cells can be reused in others of the cells according to a channel allocation scheme.
Access to the cellular communication system to communicate therethrough is limited to those who subscribe for service with an operator of the cellular communication system. That is to say, only when a subscription for service is purchased can a user utilize a mobile terminal to communicate by way of the cellular communication system.
When a service subscription is purchased, the user of a mobile terminal is able to communicate through a mobile terminal by way of the network infrastructure of the cellular communication system. When a call is originated at the mobile terminal or a call is terminated at the mobile terminal operable pursuant to the service subscription, signaling and authentication protocols are carried out to permit the call to be originated or terminated, as appropriate, at the mobile terminal. And, the service subscription provides the operator of the cellular communication system with a manner by which to keep track of the calls and to create billing records by which to bill for usage of the cellular communication system.
Historically, a single service subscription was typically associated with a particular mobile terminal. That is to say, all communications effectuated through a particular mobile terminal have been charged to a single service subscription. All calls originated or terminated at the mobile terminal were charged to that service subscription irrespective of the user of the mobile terminal.
The aforementioned, co-pending patent applications disclose, inter alia, a manner by which a mobile terminal can selectively originate or terminate calls pursuant to more than one service subscription. For instance, a first service subscription might be associated with the mobile terminal when a user is using the mobile terminal for personal use, and a separate service subscription might be associated with the mobile terminal when the user makes use of the service subscription pursuant to business purposes. Or, separate users making use of a single mobile terminal might associate the mobile terminal with a particular one of the users so that calls originated by, or terminated at, a particular mobile terminal for different users can be associated with an appropriate one of the service subscriptions.
Such an ability to use a single mobile terminal pursuant to more than one service subscription might, however, potentially cause confusion to a user of the mobile terminal. Viz., the user might inadvertently utilize the mobile terminal to originate or to terminate calls pursuant to an other-than-intended service subscription. Charges associated with such calls thereby would be charged to the other-than-intended service subscription.
A manner by which to provide a presentment to the mobile terminal of the service subscription pursuant to which communications with the mobile terminal are made would likely reduce the uncertainty to a user of the service subscription pursuant to which the mobile terminal is operable.
It is in light of this background information related to mobile terminals operable pursuant to more than one service subscription that the significant improvements of the present invention have evolved.